Farewell to the nappy years

Carrying his own nappy bag now

Splashing along through nappy days

Finally, eventually and at last, it seems my association with nappies is coming to an end.

Boy Three is reluctantly getting the idea that joining the ranks of big boys means he will have to pee in the toilet after all.

Soon, please, we will be done with wipes, tabs, rashes and leakage.

It all began so sweetly in 1999 in Gran Canaria with the cutest little panal. Curled around the skinniest legs gaping comically, catastrophically.

We had nasty plastic ones with adhesive tabs that fail if you touch them with damp hands.

Pampers, Huggies, Drinights and Pull-ups. Changing tables, nappy bags and Sudocrem.

There were exotically coloured contents – many hued poos tainted by Tardis icing, beetroot and Heinz tomato soup. (Not all at the same time.)

Apocalyptic explosions requiring mere passers-by to change their clothes.

I tried cotton and green ones, really I did, but couldn’t get along with them. I know my boys alone made a nasty ecological nightmare.

There is a lot that isn’t well designed about human children, but their casual crapping and whimsical weeing has to be some of the worst. They do so much of it and it must be dealt with however tiresome or toxic. 

I had a friend who simply lobbed her stuffed nappy bags out of the bedroom window for her husband to collect at the end of the day. That, at least, gave her a small sense of satisfaction.

Speaking of bad design – nappy bags are awful. In all those years I have never figured out to use one tidily. Of course, there are those nappy bucket affairs that create a long link sausage stuffed with baby faeces, and they work well for a while. But as soon as the little treasure starts scoffing real food the game’s a very offensive bogie. 


Then the answer is a nappy bag, a flimsy sticky-together nappy bag. If you get it ready to receive first, static or the breeze caused by flailing brat legs will shift it out of reach. Best then to wait until the wiping is done, by which time there will be poo on your fingers, the very ones you need to lick to open the bag. Hmm. 


Someone more enterprising and energetic than me could invent a cardboard frame where you hang the bag open ready for the balled-up roll of crap, no licking necessary. 

Oh and that same enterprising and energetic person could resolve the issue of wipes that are folded into each other supposedly to obediently leave the next one poking handily out of the packet. Does it work? Does it hell.

Most of the time you either end up with a huge wad or, usually when the shit is reaching elbow level, you have to flap the pack like fury to get one out at all. 

Will I miss the diaper days? Not a bit. If I’m lucky, by 2013 I’ll never have to sniff a bum or wrestle a child on a slippery changing mat, ever, ever again. 


PS None of this means that Boy Three is actually toilet trained, it’s just I got some books on the subject and he’s paying a bit of attention to them…


UPDATE: Last night, cross with us, Boy Three ran downstairs naked, hid under the table and wee-ed deliberately and maliciously. We may have further to go than I’d hoped.



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